A4Tech Bloody B720 Keyboard

Disassembly

Disassembly was done after all testing was completed, and I do not recommend doing this as you will lose warranty. You do need to take off all the key caps in order to separate the panel pieces, so keep that in mind. Some of the screws are visible immediately on the bottom, but there are a few that remain hidden until you pry off some rubber pads:

Once done, there are still a lot of plastic tabs that need to be pried open using a thin, flat driver or card. Things get easier then:

The top panel piece comes off and you can see the raised walls surrounding each key switch here. It is made of ABS plastic as mentioned before. The PCB is still screwed in place to the bottom panel piece, and we need to remove the screws from the front here to separate them.

More ABS plastic here on the bottom panel piece. We also see that the PCB is red in color. Let’s take a look at it now:

There are two Sonix 8-bit OTP (one time programmable) SN8P2612 micro-controller units, presumably for the lighting and the processing and there is another Sonix 8-bit flash SN8F2280 MCU for probably macros and key assignment etc. Yes, this is a spoiler- there is backlighting on the B720 but it is not controllable aside from brightness levels. Without a whole lot to do in terms of lighting, these 8-bit controllers will work just fine.

Here is a better look at the LK 1 switch, and we also see a multi layer PCB to no one’s surprise. When you are done, reverse the steps and put it back together. As always, this section is at your discretion and don’t complain if something goes wrong.

Knowing that the controllers are adequate enough, let’s now take a look at the software driver on the next page.